Adults Dealing with Change
Posted by Improving Lives Counseling | Articles
The weather is warming and April showers are fast approaching. Flowers are blooming and trees adorn the landscape in an array of pinks, whites, purples, and greens. Spring concerts preamble the last days of school, graduations, commencements, summer camps, and weddings. “Empty rooms and empty spaces, empty chairs at empty tables,” life as we know it is changing and for many this change can be hard.
Anxiety symptoms such as fear, avoidance, loneliness, and fears that harm will befall those close to them is diagnosed as Separation Anxiety Disorder – once only identified in children, now identified in adults. Adult Separation Anxiety Disorder (ASAD) is a psychological condition affecting people separated from individuals or places with whom they have an emotional attachment. Reoccurring distress, excessive worry, nightmares, headaches, nausea, and vomiting at the thought of separation, coupled with clinical impairment and distress are associated with ASAD. Separation anxiety is normal in infants, toddlers and young children, however in adolescents, teens, and adults, it is a mental health condition. The therapists and counselors of Improving Lives Counseling Services diagnosis and treat behavioral, emotional, and anxiety disorders.
Teens going off to college, marrying sons and daughters, week-long summer camps, and vacations spent with grandparents can trigger separation anxiety. Weekdays with mom and weekends with dad, shifting from place to place due to illnesses, jobs, travel, or divorce, all contribute to the disorder. Extreme panic, depression, a decline in routine functions, financial problems, and suicide attempts are effects of ASAD. Although exact causes have not been identified, researchers in the field of mental health believe genetic, environmental, cultural, and physiological factors contribute to the disorder.
Improving Lives Counseling Services offers individual, couples, and group sessions for children, teens, and adults “pending” separation. For those who are “post” separation, it is important to recognize the symptoms: sitting alone, staring into space, refusing to work, avoiding people, pacing, feeling agitated, refusing to leave home – vomiting, an increased heart rate, dizziness, loss of appetite, nightmares, an inability to sleep; we can help. Adult Separation Anxiety Disorder can develop into another mental disorder. Live the life you were meant to live. Call us.
